Happy birthday to Ringo Starr, first-born of the Beatles. Ringo wasn't the greatest drummer, just as George Harrison wasn't the most skilled guitarist. But Ringo had an identifiable sound that, like George's guitar-playing, contributed mightily to the Beatles' success. May he continue to age gracefully.

From an AP story about an Independence Day Bush rally in West Virginia:

Two Bush opponents, taken out of the crowd in restraints by police, said they were told they couldn't be there because they were wearing shirts that said they opposed the president.

If freedom is ever lost in America, it likely won't be in a single swoop. It will be in the quiet acquiescence to small steps. The administration's treatment of dissenters--the barring of opponents from public events, the corralling of protesters in "First Amendment zones" far from the president--is such a step. A small one, to be sure--there's no suggestion here of criminal charges being filed--but a step nonetheless.

Happy Independence Day.

(Link via Atrios. Yes, I know I'm a day late--I'm still working those blogging muscles back into shape.)

The week before my fortieth birthday seemed an appropriate time to see Simon & Garfunkel, so K and I were in the seventh row last Wednesday for the Indianapolis stop of the "Old Friends" tour. I first saw Simon & Garfunkel in their 1981 concert in Central Park, at which point the duo were roughly the age I am now, so there seemed to be a nice symmetry to the event.

The concert, while wonderful, was bittersweet, strongly focused on age and the passage of time. The tone was set at the very beginning, with the wistful opener, "Old Friends/Bookends," followed by a biting, angry "Hazy Shade of Winter" (Simon, indeed, seemed angry throughout the concert--he didn't smile until the encores). Especially poignant was Garfunkel singing the bridge to "Old Friends":

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a parkbench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy.

As for myself, seventy is still a fair ways off. Still, on this, my fortieth birthday, I find myself haunted by the passage of time. Coming to terms with life's limits is an ongoing process, of course--I gave up my athletic dreams at the age of 12, when I hit .250 in my final year of Little League. But by forty the line between potential and actual accomplishment has shifted substantially; the horizons have narrowed. Whatever might have seemed possible ten or fifteen years ago, I'm not going to teach at a top-ten law school. I'm not going to be a federal judge by forty (or forty-five, or fifty, or...). This is it; this is who I am. Time to make the most of it. Because seventy may be off in the distance, but it's out there, and it's getting closer. Just ask Simon & Garfunkel.

Time hurries on
And the leaves that are green turn to brown.

Via TalkLeft, I see that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed President Bush for 70 minutes today, as part of Fitzgerald's investigation into the revelation of Valerie Plame's CIA status last July.

In light of everything that's happened since I stopped posting back in October, the Plame story now seems to have been lost in the mix. It still represents serious misconduct, though, on an issue related to national security, and for no reason other than petty political gain. For that reason, it still bears watching.

Cooped Up is back. Sort of.

It won't be, can't be, what it was. That's largely because it had departed so much from my original vision. I started out writing for myself, using the blog as a way to organize my thoughts about various things. I hoped that a few people would read it, but that would simply be a bonus. Through the summer, though, my audience grew rapidly, and by the fall the blog stood on the periphery of what then passed for the big time. As this happened, my approach to the blog shifted: I found myself calculating what kinds of posts would be likely to draw links, and thus readers, from more widely-read blogs. I obsessed over my Sitemeter statistics. Worse, I began to resent things that took me away from blogging. Like my job. Like my family.

A few breaks didn't help, nor did trying to set a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. By last October, I was on my way toward shutting down the blog, even before Noah's condition forced the issue.

Recently, though, I've again felt the desire for the kind of outlet that a blog provides. A few weeks ago, for example, I was listening to an NPR story about the latest budget impasse. New Morning Edition cohost Steve Inskeep was interviewing a political scientist about the pay-as-you-go system that Senate Democrats, together with a few Republicans, were demanding (the plan would require that new spending increases and tax cuts be offset by spending cuts in other areas). The gist of the discussion was that this insistence was just an obstructionist political ploy. There was no mention that a pay-as-you-go system was in place throughout the 1990s, or that that system, imperfect though it was, played an important role in taming the rampant deficits that had preceded it, or that the expiration of the pay-as-you-go system more or less coincided with the explosion of the deficit under President Bush. As I listened, I found myself thinking about how much I missed Bob Edwards, the insightful former host of Morning Edition. And then I found myself wanting to be able to say so, in writing.

So I'm going to give this another shot. But this time it's going to be more of a personal outlet, and less an attempt to enter into a sustained political or legal discussion. As the election nears, there will inevitably be some politics, although the administration has proved so awful in so many ways that I don't have the time or energy to chronicle its every failing (in other words, what she said). There will be some law, because that's what I do, although on that front I'm trying to focus my energies on jumpstarting a long-stagnant piece of scholarship. But there will be other stuff, too, about the resurgent Mets, about Noah, about wine, about music. I'm going to write when the mood hits, not according to a predetermined schedule. And if I find myself returning to my old, bad habits, I'm going to shut this place down for good.

So this is the new Cooped Up. Idiosyncratic. Intermittent. And, I hope, at least occasionally interesting.

The seven months after Noah's diagnosis with auditory neuropathy were difficult and frustrating. The early days held out hope. First, the auditory neuropathy diagnosis was quickly retracted (news we greeted the news with tremendous relief, of course, but also with some annoyance, as there had been nothing tentative or qualified about the initial diagnosis). In addition, Noah's general responsiveness to sound improved dramatically, and he began to babble again as he had when he was a year old, and as he had stopped doing in the spring and summer. Also, Noah began working with a speech therapist through the Indiana First Steps program, and he seemed to enjoy it.

By the new year, however, it became clear that Noah's progress was halting and uncertain; every sign of progress seemed to be met by a setback. Words occasionally would appear, be used for a day or two, and then disappear, not to be heard again. Worst for me was the day when, after a week of glorious use, he stopped saying "daddy."

More confusingly, Noah's difficulties seemed to extend beyond auditory processing. Not only did he not speak, he also failed to pick up the few ASL signs that we and his speech therapist tried to teach him. Even efforts to get him to communicate by pointing at pictures failed. And all the while, as we grew more frustrated, so did Noah, as he struggled to communicate his wants and needs.

In mid-March, after a five-month wait for an appointment, Noah was seen at the Riley Child Development Center, an interdisciplinary program with specialists from numerous fields. While we had hoped for answers, any answers--by this point, the uncertainty surrounding Noah's condition was becoming debilitating--none were forthcoming. Noah, we were told, had severe developmental delays--which we knew. He also had some behaviors that were consistent with autism--which we suspected. But other aspects of his behavior led the doctors, if not to rule out autism altogether, at least to regard it as an unlikely diagnosis. A relief, to be sure, but the uncertainty remained. This visit, we were told, would have to be regarded as a baseline; they wanted to see him again in six months.

Over the next five weeks, nothing really changed, and by late April I was beginning to despair that he would ever talk. And then.

Early one May evening, Noah was watching a video while I checked my email on my iBook, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that he was looking in my direction rather than at the television. I looked up, he met my gaze, and out it came: "a-puw." As my mind raced, he ran over to me, put his hand on the illuminated Apple logo on the back of my iBook's screen, and said it again: "a-pull."

That was the beginning. Since then, Noah has added two or three words per day--objects depicted in his picture books, animal sounds, foods, directions, the occasional verb, we never know what will come out next. One evening K and I were talking while Noah played, and we suddenly realized that he was singing the alphabet song (he made it up to G). Ten days later, by himself and without prompting, he counted to twelve (which was followed by eighteen). For month after month, we've been reading to him, narrating what we're doing with him, just generally talking to him, not knowing whether any of it was getting through. Now, we have an answer. We're stunned. The speech therapist is stunned. And Noah is immensely pleased and proud of himself.

We're not out of the woods yet. Noah is still, by most measures, more than a year behind. His enunciation isn't very good, and he doesn't put words together yet. There's reason to hope that it's just a matter of time, that he'll catch up, but we remain braced for the possibility that he won't. Still, things look enormously better than they did just two months ago. Noah has always been a sweet, happy boy. Now, he's a sweet, happy boy who talks. And, given what we've been through in the past year, that feels like a real wonder.

Watch this space.

My handful of regular readers (hi, folks!) know that recently I've been wrestling with the question of whether to continue this blog, and if so in what form. Today, that decision was effectively made for me; as a result, this will be my last post for awhile.

My son Noah, now almost two, has been very slow to acquire language. This morning, after several previous false starts, we found out why. Noah has a condition called auditory neuropathy. As best I understand it--and this is all new to me--his ears work fine, and his brain works fine, but somewhere between ears and brain the neural signals are getting scrambled. He does hear, but he's unable to make the rapid, fine distinctions necessary to understand spoken language.

What exactly this means for the future isn't exactly clear. The doctors this morning were frustratingly vague, although my brief research this morning suggests that this may have been inevitable, as the condition doesn't seem to be well understood.

In any event, it's pretty clear that we have some work ahead of us. And in light of these developments, the things that I've been writing about seem ... well, not trivial, exactly, but less interesting somehow, and less worthy of my time. I can't change the direction of the country's government or legal system (or the fortunes of the Mets or the Giants, for that matter); I can change the life of my son. And that's what I'm going to do.

I'm not going to take down the blog, and I hope to be back in some form at some point. But for now, at least, other matters require my attention. My thanks to everyone who has stopped by during the 17 months I've been writing Cooped Up. I hope I'll see you again.

Yesterday I signed onto AOL to check my email (I know, I know, but I've had the account for more than ten years now--it's how old friends know how to reach me) and was confronted by a truly horrifying sight on the welcome screen:

This has to be viewed as evidence that the media, or at least some media, have turned against Bush. Is it even conceivable that such a photograph would have been used in the final months of 2001? I'm no fan of the president, but this photo strikes even me as somewhat unfair.

(That is Bush, right? I mean, the photograph is meant to accompany the story about the president, and not the one about the bear attack, isn't it?)

The Days of Awe, which culminated yesterday with Yom Kippur, are traditionally a time of introspection. And as I reflected over the past year, it became abundantly clear that some aspects of my life are out of whack, and that this blog is part of the problem.

I'm going to take a break from posting this week (as I meant to do last week, before the Valerie Plame story broke) and think things over.

Without question, this has been a bad week for the Bush administration, and not simply because of the latecoming media attention to the administration's leak of Valerie Plame's CIA status back in July. David Kay's interim report on the search for weapons of mass destruction has now been issued, and--as many analysts expected--it apparently finds neither stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons nor an active nuclear weapons program. In the meantime, American soldiers continue to be killed in Iraq. On the domestic front, unemployment remains at 6.1 percent, and the number of Americans without health insurance is rising sharply. And, as the Plame story was breaking, Time Magazine published a cover photo of the president in his flight suit, with the title, "Mission Not Accomplished."

One of the interesting political questions in this week of leaks and hunkering down was what impact the Plame story would have on the president's approval ratings. And today the New York Times and CBS News released the results of the first poll (of which I'm aware) taken entirely after the Plame story hit the Washington Post's front page last Saturday. The results, not surprisingly, aren't particularly good for the president. On the right track/wrong track question, a clear majority (56 percent) say the country is on the wrong track, while only 37 percent respond that it is headed in the right direction. Respondents disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy (37-56), which is not surprising given that a majority (59 percent) believe the economy is in worse shape than it was when Bush took office. More ominously for Bush, perhaps, the respondents are nearly evenly split over the president's handling of Iraq (47 percent approve, 48 percent disapprove) and over Bush's handling of foreign policy generally (44-45), and a clear plurality are uneasy about the president's ability to handle a foreign crisis (45-50).

A majority continues to approve of the way Bush handles his job, which has to offer the administration some cheer. But even here, there are ominous signs for the president: his approval number (51 percent) has been lower only once during his presidency, in late August 2001, while his disapproval number (42) is now the highest it's ever been in a Times/CBS poll. And the trend line is steadily downward since May.

To anyone familiar with this administration's modus operandi, these numbers suggest that things could get very ugly very soon. The Bush political team's instinct when under fire is to fight dirty. We saw this in South Carolina in March 2000 with the smearing of John McCain, we have what sure looks like an example of this in the Valerie Plame story, and we have the resonant words of Karl Rove, overheard by an Esquire reporter in the White House in 2002 (link via Kevin Drum): "We will f--k him. Do you hear me? We will f--k him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f--ked him!"

Politics is and always has been a nasty business, and no party has a monopoly on nastiness. It's hard, though, to fight like the Bush administration does while simultaneously trumpeting a commitment to maintaining honor and dignity in the White House. The real test of a person's character is not how he behaves when things are going well, but how he behaves when the tide has turned against him. We're finding out how the president handles the latter situation. And so far, the signs aren't good.

It came out yesterday that, when Justice notified the White House Counsel's office on Monday that it was beginning a criminal investigation, and that the White House should preserve certain categories of records dating back to February 2002, Justice informed the counsel's office that it did not need to let the White House staff know of the orders until yesterday morning. That was certainly curious. People do work in the White House at night, after all, and a lot can happen between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.

Now it looks worse. On my drive home, I heard NPR's Nina Totenberg report the following (transcript thanks to Atrios):

The White house asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day before issuing a directive to preserve all documents and logs which led one seasoned federal prosecutor to wonder why they wanted to wait a day, and who at the justice department told them they could do that, and why?

Heh. Just got an automated political survey call:

Do you approve of the job President George W. Bush is doing?

- No.

Do you want to stop liberal Democrats Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Daschle from taking control of the United States Senate?

- I'm so stunned by the description of Evan Bayh as a liberal that I almost forget to answer "no." I understand push polling, and it's indisputable that Evan Bayh is a Democrat. But liberal? Evan Bayh? I don't think so.

The poll, it turns out, was conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Well, shoot, they can call me again--I'm always happy to give them the views of a politically-active registered Democrat.